Art fraud.

Online auctions have helped boost line art sales, but the $2.3 million legal judgment won last month by a noted Japanese pop artist also highlighted some of the hazards involved.

Hajime Sorayama, known for his erotic and futuristic art, won the judgment last month--including $1 million in punitive damages--against Beverly Hills art publisher Robert Bane and his company, Robert Bane Ltd. Inc. Bane failed to account for the proceeds from sales of 33 original Sorayama paintings and illegal, cut-rate dumping of scores of reproductions.

For Sorayama, whose work includes a number of futuristic pin-up illustrations of women, it meant that once closely controlled limited edition reproductions of his paintings were being sold lot $100 to $200 online, rather than the thousands of dollars they might have commanded.

"It can be a big problem for artists whose work is well known: you have to be very wary," said Bert Green, who owns an art gallery in downtown Los Angeles. "To willfully flood the market with reproductions is unconscionable, because it's incredibly damaging to the market, the artist and legitimate collectors of the work."

Sorayama, who designed the popular Aibo robotic dog for Sony Corp., and whose work is in the Smithsonian and New York's Museum of Modern Art, was tipped off along with his agent to the fraud after collectors complained through the artist's Web site. The artist discovered numerous online listings for Sorayama limited editions at up to 90 percent off the work's list price on eBay.

"It basically shot the market for Sorayama reproductions, because it's impossible to achieve sustained value and had a derivative effect on original market," said Paul Laurin of Weiner & Laurin LLP, the law firm representing Sorayama.

It was around 2002, after Bane's third exclusive publishing agreement with Sorayama expired (the first written deal was in 1994), that the bulk of the dumping took place. The market for Sorayama originals has recovered over the past six months. Laurin said, though the market for the limited-edition reproductions will take longer to come back.

Staff reporter Anne Riley-Katz can be reached at ariley-katz@labusinessjournal.com or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 225.